What is intertextuality? How does intertextuality challenge E.D. Hirsch’s idea that a text has a single meaning created by its author? Explain with reference to examples drawn from any media format.
According to American literary critic, E.D. Hirsch, in order to interpret a body of text, one must ask one’s self the only question that can be answered objectively – “what, in all probability, did the author mean to convey?” He believed that the author’s intended meaning equates the meaning of a text and it is in fact, the reader’s duty to uncover the the author’s intentions.
“The meaning of a text and its author’s intentions are one and the same.”
Hirsch’s concept revolves around the assumption that a body of text is original, and is purely a body of the author’s sole “intentions”. The production of text, if one were to adhere to Hirsch’s theory, is therefore exclusive to the author’s own ideas and concepts and free of external influence. However, the notions of langue and parole disputes this idea. According to Barthes in 1984, “It [la langue] is the social part of language, the individual cannot himself either create or modify it”.
Furthermore, Ferdinand de Saussure’s work on structuralism and semiotics demonstrates the subjectivity of language and can be said to have sewn the seeds for modern concepts of intertextuality (such as those developed by Roland Barthes and Julia Kristeva). Intertextuality challenges the idea of a text’s ability to be truly original and therefore disagrees with Hirsch’s theory. In this essay, I will focus on how conscious intertextuality as well as the semiotics involved in unconscious intertextuality both dispute the idea that the meaning of a text belongs exclusively to its author’s intentions.
Julia Kristeva, who was the first to use the term “intertextuality”, proposed the idea that a text should not be interpreted merely by its words at face value, but also studied based on other works it has adapted and was influenced by. The concept can be further expanded upon by Gunther Kress’ notion of “ceaseless semiosis” which brings to light the social aspect of a text’s creation.
“From the beginning, I use materials which I have encountered before, which bear the meanings of their social contexts, to weave a new text which, because it is woven from materials of other texts, everywhere and always connects with those other te...
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...mpaigns, can now be seen as the qualities Bridget desires by smoking Silk Cut.
Once again, Hirsch’s idea of a text bearing only one singular meaning can be easily disputed. The interpretation of the Silk Cut advertisement, as well as the use of Silk Cut cigarettes in Bridget Jones’s Diary, is highly subjective and dependent on the reader’s cultural literacy and existing knowledge.
Intertextuality in the media, both print and otherwise, has become too powerful to ignore, especially in this day and age. The internet, satirical texts, advertisements and books are only some examples that demonstrate the effects other works and a reader’s prior knowledge have on any given text. Intertextuality in its various states, conscious and unconscious, is certainly a valid contention against the theory of E.D. Hirsch.
Bibliography, References & Notes
1) Cultural Consumption and Everyday Life”, Reading As Production, John Storey, Pg 63, Arnold, London, 1999
2) Intertextuality, Allen.G, Pg 9, Routledge, London 2000
3) http://web.uvic.ca
4) http://www.theonion.com
5) http://www.geocities.com/howtodressemo
6) http://www.aber.ac.uk
7) Reading Ads Socially. Goldman. R, Routledge, London, 1992
In How to Read Literature like a Professor one of the new literary skills I learned was intertextuality. Intertextuality is a connection between different literary sources, such as “the ongoing interactions between poems and stories” (Foster 29). Similar to intertextuality, the
By reading a certain print texts, readers are manipulated into accepting or rejecting additional texts. The short story “The Altar of the Family” written by Michael Welding shares many comparisons with the feature article “Boys to Men” written by Stephen Scourfield, and by reading one the reader can make clear understanding of the other. Symbolism, genre and certain values and attitudes are present in both the texts and will be further examined in the following essay to show that a readers understanding of particular print texts is shaped by the reading of previous texts.
Lowe, Peter J. Texas Studies in Literature & Language; Spring2007, Vol. 49 Issue 1, p21-44, 24p Academic Search Complete Ebesco. Web. 23 July 2011
Intertextuality is the idea that each literary work can not be independent, but instead grows off of other literary works. This is extremely popular in today's culture, especially in television. Shows like Family Guy and The Simpsons are heavily dependent on it for humor. Usually most of these instances are extremely obvious throughout the shows, but i picked one that may not be as noticeable as the others. In Family Guy's "Road to Germany" episode, Steward and Brian use a time machine to go back to Nazi Germany. Stewart's words before they enter the time machine followed exactly as they were written in Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder". This obviously then carried the came meaning that it had back in Ray's writing. My second example is this
Kristeva, Julia. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. New York: Columbia UP, 1980.
In "The Intentional Structure of the Romantic Image," one encounters a piece of the twentieth-century discussion of the philosophical considerations of language. One can say that Paul de Man really takes the view of Romanticism akin to that of Martin Heidegger's view of poetry in general. Heidegger states that poetry must be a kind of "speaking being" or the creation of something "new" through language.(Note 1) Language itself stands upon itself in poetry according to Heidegger. De Man picks up the broad discussion of what language is with his discussion of the Romantic image. The main thesis of this essay lies in the difference between the everyday consciousness that one has of the concrete world and the consciousness which one achieves through the Romantic image. De Man says that these two functions of the consciousness differ and that the objects one finds in concrete nature are essentially different from those found in Romantic imagery.
The 1920s were a pivotal period in American history because the nation established many of the structures that it required to promote a lifestyle that is enjoyed by many diverse people across the country today. In the United States, the 1920s were a distinct decade because a majority of its citizens enjoyed immense wealth, and this period marked an expansion in the country’s establishment of infrastructure and the people who lived during this time contributed significantly to music and the arts. For the first time in history, more Americans moved to the cities and the surrounding suburbs, which created a cultural shift to emphasis on the middle class working individual, rather than on the rural farmer. It is important to understand the implications of the 1920s on modern American culture, because this was an essential decade that had a significant influence on the American way of thinking in addition to the American way of life.
message are Jonathan Culler and Stephen Greenblatt. Culler points out that we read literature differently than we read anything else. According to the intertextual theory of how people read literature, readers make assumptions (based on details) that they would not make in real life.
It is noteworthy to be stated clearly at the outset of the present paper that literary theories are composed of a mere plethora of highly debatable ideas, concepts and assumptions. They are in other words, strikingly vague, opaque and of a typical flexibility. According to Wellek and Warren (1966, p. 30) }there are then, not only one or two but literally hundreds of independent, diverse, and mutually exclusive conceptions of literature, each of which is in some way right~. That is, the diversity of literary theories and even the contradiction between them sometimes, is something natural.
Reader-Response theories propose that works of literature exist in a mutual relationship between the reader and author. The meaning that a reader extracts from a text is a simultaneous result of both the author’s intent, and the reader’s interpretation of it (Roberts, 149). With this theory, there is an inherent subjectivity associated with the analysis of any work of literatur. An author may have a specific meaning to the story but another person can read the story and create his or her own interpretation that is just as meaningful as the author’s original ideas. Put another way, meani...
Clayton, Jay, and Eric Rothstein, eds. Influence and Intertextuality in Literary History. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1991. Print.
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During the time-period when they authored this essay, the commonly held notion amongst people was that “In order to judge the poet’s performance, we must know what he intended.”, and this notion led to what is termed the ‘Intentional fallacy’. However, Wimsatt and Beardsley argue that the intention, i.e., the design or plan in the author’s mind, of the author is neither available nor desirable for judging the success of a work of literary art. It is not available because the author will most certainly not be beside the reader when he/she reads the text, and not desirable because intention as mentioned already is nothing but the author’s attitude towards his work, the way he felt while writing the text and what made him write that particular piece of writing and these factors might distract the reader from deciphering the meaning from the text. This method of reading a text without any biographical or historical background of either the poem or the poet practiced by the New Critics was known as ‘Closed Reading’. This stemmed from their belief in the autonomy of the text.
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